Education can hold off dementia, new USC-led study finds
Two USC-led studies – which appeared on April 16 in a special, dementia-focused supplement of The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences – shed new insight into dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. One study, led by USC Price School of Public Policy Vice Dean Julie Zissimopoulos, a researcher at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, explored how dementia would be impacted if other chronic diseases associated with increased risk of dementia were addressed; for example, if the onset of diabetes or hypertension after age 50 was reduced by half. Such a feat would extend people’s lives by a year and improve their overall health, Zissimopoulos and co-authors found. However, those improvements would come with a significant tradeoff: more people aged 65 and over would live with dementia and for a longer period of time.